Should I apologize for my long absence? I know it has been almost two weeks since I posted last! In my defense, I have been keeping myself plenty busy. I was at my parents' house for a week keeping an eye on things while they were away, and I managed to spend the majority of my time away from the internet! (I'm excited because this has been a rather difficult task as-of-late.) Instead I spent plenty of time in the kitchen (oh-what a glorious space it is compared to my tiny excuse for a kitchen in Pittsburgh!), I caught up with a few people I hardly ever get to see anymore, became enamored with my mother's two Alaskan Malamutes, I spent a late afternoon in New Hope with my sister, and I got to spend a few hours catching up with my aunt who flew back with my mom.
As far as baking goes, my endeavors were not completely out of sight while I was away. Savory cooking is not my forte, but I made an effort to feed my siblings and myself food other than sweets. I made a pizza using Mike and I's favorite pizza dough recipe, only later realizing that the yeast I used from the pantry had expired years ago. Needless to say, I ended up with un-risen dough which made one pizza instead of two, and tons of left-over toppings (which I later used in an omelette). The pizza was delicious though - we topped it with onion, green pepper, red pepper, zucchini, pepperoni, ground beef, and bacon - my brother and I both had a friend over and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the meal (or so I am led to believe...).
I also made a pan of baked macaroni and cheese with amazing wild blossom smoked cheddar; it was a little dry but the cheese made up for it.
The first picture you see in this post was taken by my good friend Alina Chygyryk (she has a blog too!) and it is a picture of melt-in-your mouth, so decadently chocolate-y chocolate chunk cookies I also made, following this recipe. I used super dark cocoa powder and three different kinds of chocolate chips (milk, semi-sweet, and dark chocolate chunks). And, later in the week, at the subtle request of my aunt, I made ridiculously rich brownies following the recipe from the Tartine cookbook. These brownies should be bite-size, because that's about as much as you can handle all at once, but wow, they are delicious! I couldn't get a great picture of them but here they are in all their macro-glory.
In my next post I'll tell you all about the zebra cake... it deserves its own post!

Labels: brownies, cookies, pizza